Gaming in the Valley

Thanks to a weekend outing to the purported original D&D convention, it’s after midnight and I find myself in San Ramon, outside a Marie Callender’s that just half an hour ago seemed bustling, but is now closed. My inner voice whines, Marie Callender’s closes? You mean they’re a real restaurant? I thought they were like, you know, Denny’s. Or at least Baker’s Square.

I briefly flirt with the idea of getting in my car and going all the way back home to the city, where I can get something at King of Thai Noodle or at least my own kitchen. But San Ramon is in the East Bay’s Tri-Valley Area, or at least I think it is and would know for sure what the area was called if I weren’t such a city-dwelling, Silicon-Valley-working weenie. It’s part of a stretch of suburbia along I-680, behind the hills that you would see to the east if you were on the bay itself, which means I am not going anywhere easily.

Closed Marie Callender’s is next to a strip mall which has a Closed Chevy’s and some Closed Places of Non-Feeding-You Business. Beyond these, there’s a Chevron. I have not eaten in eleven hours and I am not picky.
It’s one of the larger, mart-style gas stations, giving me more options to consume starches than I could have wanted. I grab a couple things and head to the register. There’s no one there, but the guy manning the counter has the register open and seems to be waiting. Fifteen seconds later a woman in her 40s or an unkind set of 30s comes through the door and steps up to the register to finish paying; she gives the cashier seven cents, and in return hands her a twenty. It’s after midnight, math is hard, I don’t want to know.

“And can you do these?” she asks, handing him a couple scratched-off lottery cards. He scans them and I watch “$3.00″ flash on the lottery machine’s top display for both cards. “Please,” she punctuates, an after-thought.

The cashier says something to her in a voice so low I can’t make it out. “Oh, I’ve got three dollars coming back?” she responds. Her voice tastes like cigarettes. Her eyes go to the counter display of scratch-offs, and she juts a finger to emphasize her choices. “Then can I get a Pot o’ Gold, and two of the Hot Chili Peppers, and a Lucky Fortune.” A frequent scratch-off gambler, it would seem, from the lack of hesitation in making her selections. “Please.”

After I pay for my ad hoc dinner and head out, I pass her in the parking lot, sitting in her pick-up truck, the door still open, scratching her cards against her steering wheel. That night, I dream of dice-rolling and gold coins.

It’s been held there, I think, for 29 years. GenCon, in comparison, has been around for 38. Dundracon is billing itself as the longest-running D&D con, though, and I’m a little shaky on the details of how that works.

The one thing that I still don’t get is that you have a group of folks who love stuff like Star Trek which features an Earth where racism and other -isms have been eradicated, and yet they remain insensitive to issues of race, gender, sexuality, etc… Kind of an eye-opener for me, since I don’t go to gaming cons on a regular basis.

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